


Broken Record

by carrionkid



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Autism, Autism Spectrum, Autistic Spencer Reid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 01:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6309688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carrionkid/pseuds/carrionkid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is about Kid Spence and diagnoses.<br/>-<br/>Spencer Reid didn’t talk until he was five. Letter after letter was sent home from school, asking about him. He ended up being held back in kindergarten, though he did catch up very quickly afterwards. When he first started talking it was in lines from books. Everyone was puzzled, constantly trying to pick the lock that was Spencer Reid’s brain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Record

Spencer Reid didn’t talk until he was five. Letter after letter was sent home from school, asking about him. He ended up being held back in kindergarten,  _ though he did catch up very quickly afterwards _ . When he first started talking it was in lines from books. Everyone was puzzled, constantly trying to pick the lock that was Spencer Reid’s brain. His mother read to him every night and by the time he was four he’d worked his way through every book in the house. Despite all of that, idioms still weren’t his strong suit. Everywhere he went people whispered behind their hands -- 

_ that boy is a  _ **_broken record_ **

\--and every time he heard it it was like another blade in his chest. Reid wasn’t broken, and he wasn’t a record. 

 

Later on he finds a word for it; he stores it inside of him with every other word he’s ever read.

_ Ech. _

_            O. _

_                       La.  _

_                                  Li.  _

_                                             A. _

Each syllable like a stair step. It comes from the Greek words  _ ēkhō  _ and  _ lalia _ ; echo speech. The technical definition is ‘meaningless repetition of another person's spoken words as a symptom of psychiatric disorder.’ But it was never meaningless. Each thing he said had intent. His mother always knew, she was the only one who could break the code; her observations were discredited and he wouldn’t know until later on why. But she would understand what Reid meant.

 

Spencer remembered when his first kindergarten teacher demanded he’d be moved to another classroom, another class, new classmates and new posters and new smells and new sounds. His mother and his father came to pick him up halfway through the day and everything was a blur except for a single moment: he was sitting under a desk, back pressed to the wall. His mother sat on the floor in front of him, whispering. 

_            Spence, dear, Spence, it’s okay.  _

He remembers what he says. 

_                       Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.  _

The other kids were gone, the teacher took them out to recess after he started having his meltdown. His father looked upset but he couldn’t figure out why until far later on. His mother’s eyes lit up. 

_            Frankenstein! _

Reid nodded.

_            Is that how you feel? _

Reid nodded again. His mother turned to his father.

_            William, he doesn’t like this classroom. He doesn’t like this change. We need to make them change it back. _

_            Diana, you know I can’t do that.  _

_            Yes dear, but Spencer doesn’t like it! _

And suddenly Reid was invisible to them both.

 

Reid’s father was the one that pushed for a diagnosis; his mother didn’t trust doctors as far as she could throw them. (Which, by the way, was about two feet, three if she took them by surprise or if she had a running start and if you counted a pushing motion rather than a throwing motion.) He remembered hour after hour of tests; putting patterns together and telling stories and figuring out which emotion different kids in different black and white pictures were feeling. He remembered sitting in a chair meant for someone much taller than him, with his hands tucked under his thighs (the pressure of it was nice) and his legs swaying back and forth. He remembered the way the nurse spoke (always sighing and her tongue thick with what he would later identify as pity) words he’d never forget. 

 

_ Your son is a very bright young man-- _

_            But? _

_ But the test results are undeniable.  _

_            Undeniable? _

_ Yes, Spencer is Autistic. _

_            He-he is? _

_ He’s very high functioning,  _ **_at least_ ** _. _

 

The **_at least_** was like getting the wind knocked out of him. Reid said nothing the entire ride home. His father slept on the couch that night and Reid slept in bed next to his mother after she’d spent most of the night reading to him. The next morning he woke up and kissed his mother on the cheek. Then he walked to the library by himself, both parents oblivious, both parents digesting the news. He read every book he could on the subject, and held every sentence inside of him. It was obvious to Spencer that the tests were absolutely correct. 

 

It was a name to every skeleton in his closet, to every question he never thought he’d know an answer to. It was a label and labels were good, like happy and sad and angry. And he knew it wasn’t lethal, so why was everyone so upset? The nuances, the implications of the diagnosis didn’t make sense to him until much later on. So he started to take all the words inside of him and break them apart, he took all the blades he’d held inside of him to his walls of sentences and cut them into pieces. Then, he began to build his own sentences. 

 

Spencer moved on to first grade and stopped speaking in quotes, he stopped rocking and covering his ears, he stopped moving away from unwanted hugs. He also stopped trying to make friends. He started to read more and more, he started to move away from his father, he started to try to blend in.

 

And things were good, for a long time. Until his father left.


End file.
